J Clay

Thank you! I was able to gather some apricot buds over the weekend. I was just getting ready to contact a local orchard to see if I could gather some apple buds as I’ve had no luck reaching out on social media. I attached some pictures of my apricot grafting I did over the weekend. It’s a waiting game but is definitely worth it just for the joy of making a new tree!

I have 25 apple rootstock (EMLA 7) and 20 plum rootstock (Myrobalan). I planted them this spring and am wondering if anyone knows where I can purchase new growth scions for end of summer chip bud grafting? I’m sure it’s not really a thing since they would be hard to keep alive during shipping and I know I’m running out of time to get them healed before first frost (zone 5b, Colorado) but I’m hopeful.  
I’ve got a local lead on apricots so really I’m looking for plums and apples. I had some success with my whip and tongue grafting apricots onto the plum rootstock this spring but I’m hoping I’ll have more success with chip bud grafting.
I planted my orchard last year with 3-5 year old trees but the grasshoppers devastated my apples and Italian plums. My hope was to graft the new growth off of them this year but growth was limited and I don’t want to stress them out any more by removing what little material the grasshoppers left. I have Surecrop, Liberty, Winesap, Honeycrisp, and Fireside growing in the apple orchard and a plan to protect them from the grasshoppers next year. The guinnea hens just couldn’t keep up with the grasshopper load this year.
Any tips on sourcing late summer scions to harvest buds would be greatly appreciated. I might just have to go to some local parks and do some guerrilla pruning

We considered it until we found out how much the county would tax us. When we bought our farm our daughter made friends with the county assessor’s daughter (unbeknownst to me at the time). When the assessor mom came to pick up her daughter we had a friendly chat about our dreams and aspirations and after I told her all of our secrets she told me the county would tax us 60% of the revenue. Totally not worth the pain of developing the campsites to county standards and dealing with people at that point. And you know this lady is going to be checking out our property to make sure we’re not doing it on the down low. I learned a good lesson though, be careful who you tell your plans to. Most rural folks have been here for generations and everybody knows everybody.

Went to the farm to water and weed the orchard and noticed that the grasshoppers prefer nibbling on sunflower leaves and have left our tree leaves alone...so far. Last year we lost a large portion of our newly planted trees to the grasshoppers. I keep forgetting to bring down my cilantro seeds as I hear grasshoppers hate cilantro. Now I’ve got a new plan of action. Plant cilantro around the trees and sunflowers as a border. Hopefully this works until we can move out to the farm and get some guinea hens out there!

Oh I like that idea! I am trying to shift our tree planting to the fall anyway. We’re going to put together some air beds this weekend at our house in the city so maybe we’ll just pot them here so I can keep a close eye on them and water them with the air beds!

Okay they just showed up. I guess I got chestnuts too...I’ve been waiting a long time lol. The American chestnut (we’ll see if that’s accurate if I ever get nuts) is already leafed out, the other nuts are budded and the figs don’t even look like it’s possible to get a bud off of them (the figs are the dark ones).

You might be interested in this book titled Naturally Sweet Food in Jars and the author uses Pamonas pectin in all the recipes. There are recipes with honey, maple syrup, and coconut as the sweetener. I have yet to make any of the recipes but I have a package of Pamonas in my pantry that is calling my name.

Hey y’all, I’ve got 7 bare root figs and hazelnuts showing up today, shipping took longer with the pandemic I suppose and I’m worried about them since it’s so late in the season. A little background: the trees are from TyTy nursery out of Georgia (they don’t have the best reviews but I figured I’d go with the 1-2’ trees and hopefully have better luck than 5’ trees from them). My orchard is in high arid desert in Colorado (near Canon City). Due to the extreme climate differences from their origin location and my orchard I am already planning on using shade cloth, mulch, and drip irrigation all summer and am hoping this combo will give them a fighting chance, the sun is brutal out here! I can’t make it out to the orchard to plant until Saturday so they’re just going to be chilling in the city with me for 4 days. I usually plant much earlier in the season and allow trees to come out of dormancy gently but now the trees are going to have to battle between getting established, heat, and the grasshoppers (don’t even get me started on grasshoppers).
Okay so my question is: Should I store the bare root trees outside in a bucket of moist sand/mulch to acclimate the trees to this climate while they are waiting the 4 days to be planted? If I were planting in April I would just store them in the packing in my crawl space for the week but since it’s basically summer I’m worried the shock will be too much! I really want to keep these babies alive as I am planning on growing them to feed livestock and don’t want to have to wait to start again next year. Any guidance is much appreciated. My husband and I have planted over 100 fruit trees in the past year and are still learning, always learning

Thanks for the info everybody, I’m going to go ahead and soak them. All the info I have for the peach (nemaguard), apple (antonovka & mandchurian crab) says to stratify for 60-90 days, I got some prunus Vera for the pistachio rootstock and that says 6 weeks while my English walnut says to stratify for 90-120 days. I’m hoping 90 days will cut it for the walnuts! I’ve been watching some Akiva Silver videos and I’m always amazed at how close he grows his seedlings. I had been planning on carefully sectioning off areas for each seedling but after realizing I can separate them for grafting while they’re dormant it helps me put aside square foot gardening rules and helps my ocd chill out.

Hey y’all I’m preparing to stratify a few varieties of seeds this weekend (mainly apple, peach, and pistachio rootstocks) and I keep reading about soaking seeds for 24 hours before you stratify in the fridge and I’m wondering if I have to soak them before stratifying them outside. We’re in zone 5a in south central Colorado so they should definitely get cool enough. This is my first year trying to grow rootstock and I want to get it right, hopefully I’m not too late in the season! I’m going to separate each variety and place them in white sand in different buckets to find them easier. Thanks in advance.